Using bridge's "photo downloader" I normally use a config that looks like this:

The key being the Metadata "Image Unique ID". I used to do this on Canon (5dm2) and it worked great. However I've had issues with Olympus files (em1mk1 and em1mk2 ORF and JPG). The problem is it becomes inconsistent. Sometimes I get an import to create all the files renamed properly and it works great. Other times it doesn't get the unique id bit at all and creates files with that bit missing all together. So when I shoot bursts, i end up with filenames with overlapping names that then get automatically renamed with -1 -2 -3 etc.

On a good day it looks like this:

If I spot this when it happens and just re-run the import, it works, sometimes. Sometimes three times a charm, etc. This has been going on for awhile, and I finally just changed to a sequence number instead of a unique id, but the problem is the import doesn't always get bursts in the correct order.

Batch rename can't seem to pull the unique ID at all, instead just using the first digits of the filename. So this isn't a work around for me.

This is a problem I wrestled with for a long time while using the renaming functionality in Photo Mechanic at the front end of my workflow - until I figured out what was causing it. I traced my problem to the Adobe DNG Converter.

Using ExifTool, I learned of three tags in the metadata called 'Shutter Count', 'File Number', and 'Image Number'.

File Number is always the four-digit number my Nikons assign to the filename, e.g. DSC0481. Shutter Count is the actual count of shutter trips on the camera. My raw files indicate that Shutter Count is always greater than File Number by an exponential difference as I continue to shoot.

It gets interesting when the DNG Converter is run (I use the DNG Converter standalone app in my workflow). When the DNG Converter runs, it creates the Image Number field in the metadata and populates it with Shutter Count. Image Number did not exist in the files until DNG Converter created it.

So, I'm finding that when renamer software (Bridge, Lightroom, Photo Mechanic, ...) runs, it produces a different number for a unique id reference based on whether the Image Number field exists AT THAT MOMENT. If it doesn't, your resultant unique id may be the File Number. If it does, your unique id will likely be the Image Number. Since these numbers are never the same, renaming can create non-sequential results.

I should clarify one things here. DNG Converter creates the Image Number field in the DNG file output, obviously. This means that the original raw file and the DNG file could produce a different unique id depending on where the renamer software has to get it from.

The frustrating bit of this, is it works fine on my Canon gear (now also on a 5dm4), but it fails sometimes, and not all the time, on a EM1mk2, a Pen-F, and I think the EM1mk1 when I had that. This still leads me to believe there is some race condition in the renaming, perhaps to do with when the file-id is put into the DNG or similar.

Hoping this is something that once pointed out becomes easy for Adobe to fix.

It always works for me in that I get a number in the rename. Issue is that it will be a different number for the same file depending on whether I've converted to DNG yet. Really screws with numerical renaming.

yea, just pulled pictures I shot with olympus "pro-capture" mode, which gives me the potential for 60 shots in 1 second. The downloader promptly eradicates the order of the shoot based on how it renames sequences. I don't want original file names, as I like files that are timestamped in the filename (not just the metadata).

I got sent here when I tried to file a bug report, not sure if anyone at adobe actually reads this.

As a work-around I discovered that instead of using "metadata->uniqueid" I can use preserved filename, and i get original shooting order out of the camera at the cost of a number of extra digits in the filename that I'll deal with for now. Thankfully this works post DNG conversion still also.

Forgot about that field. Since it's an Adobe-centric field, it's not available to me in Photo Mechanic unfortunately. Wish it was. At least it does preserve the original camera filename.

PM has such a powerful file naming feature with its incredible access to all metadata (camera, IPTC, time, ICC, GPS, user/client, and other special fields), custom variables options, and metadata field parsing support that I refuse to use anything else at the front-end. It's light years beyond anything in Adobe's apps. Better/faster downloading/file handling, reviewing, culling, keywording and other metadata management features, and the best in file naming options, IMHO.

Would be nice to see Adobe advance file renaming in both Bridge and Lightroom in this way. Bring all that metadata up and make it available for file naming schemes. Lightroom is slightly better than Bridge, but nothing like it could be. Not holding my breath.

Now the post I mentioned is back, however not mine, while that I posted 34 mintues ago got deleted (though displayed in list of topics - as last comment). That was its content:

"From few days in many sections of this forum latest posts are deleted by... ?Only here I saw 1-2 posts that one was answered by me, but is deleted as well.

Trying to access some topics by clicking title it says 'page not found', however it's still possible in case of much more of them than trying to access by clicking on last added comment (on list of topics).

Take a look at list of topics to see this one was commented by Bill Broughton one day ago, but here the latest is from 1 week :/"